Ep #52: Debunking the Myths of Mastery

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell asserts that 10,000 hours of hard practice is what’s required to become not just an expert, but that you need 10,000 hours to become phenomenal, to become world class at something, to become so amazing that you become a kind of giant among giants.

The book is a meditation on mastery of sorts. It’s his take on mastery and what’s required to achieve the kind of success we’d somehow all agree has the mark of greatness. Gladwell claims that 10,000 hours is what it takes to create the kind of success that is an outlier, hence the title of the book.

And from this book was born this idea that has spread like wildfire of the 10,000-hour rule. Gladwell writes, in his book, “10 years, well it’s roughly how long it takes to put in 10,000 hours of hard practice. 10,000 hours is the magic number of greatness.”

However, I greatly disagree. Listen in today as we discuss not only the, “Rule” of 10,000 hours, and an evolved variation of that used at places like Amazon and Facebook, known for their innovation, which is known as the 10,000 experiments rule.

But I also want to talk with you about the larger paradigm that gives rise to these rules, and that is the paradigm, the very patriarchal and incomplete, I believe, paradigm, that we currently have for mastery. This current paradigm of mastery, rather than being one that best supports the ever-deepening and ever-enriching expression of creative potential is, at best, not the best we can do, and at worst can be very limiting and even damaging; a damaging mythology for personal and collective creativity in evolution.

There is so much more that can be added to this discussion, and today’s episode is going to be a start to that conversation.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, everybody and welcome back. And I want to say Happy Halloween. I’m actually recording this on the eve of All Hallows’ Eve. And I also quickly would like to say that, in our house, we have a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe going out trick or treating. But I have yet to convince my three children that that is a fabulous idea.

They do love that book and I’ve got one out of the three – my daughter is going as a witch, and then I also have an air force fighter pilot, and I also have what I guess you would call an invisible man with, like, these floating green LED light-up rave glasses on. So this was my Son, Elijah, his idea was to go as basically darkness with these green floating lights. So he’s totally jazzed about it, so awesome, that’s what’s going to happen tomorrow night then.

So I hope you all are enjoying autumn wherever you are. It’s beautiful here. The colors are coming on, leaves are changing. It’s blustery. It’s harvest time. Our week in Nebraska on the farm was great. This time of year always makes me so nostalgic for being home in Iowa on the farm. I feel like there’s a certain time of night when I expect, between the hours of 10 and three, I expect to hear a combine or a tractor crunching onto the gravel and pulling into the yard as my dad and hired hands came in from late night working in the fields.

But instead, I do get to hear our neighbor out there farming, which is heartwarming. So wherever you are, I hope you’re enjoying this season and I am super excited to talk with you today about this topic of debunking the 10,000-rule myth.

But in general, that was my first idea for a theme. That was kind of my intro idea for an episode, and I thought, I think there’s more here. There’s more of a reason why it kind of makes me incensed, the whole discussion around the 10,000-hour rule, there was more underneath that. and I wanted to include this particular episode right lined up with these conversations we’ve been having about an internal self-organizing intelligence and the best way to develop that.

Because in conjunction with that, if you’ve been listening to my podcast, you also know that I’m very interested in how best to make life work, especially as a creative. And I’m not interested in how to make life best work in just a cruise by kind of way. I am really interested in what it means to be an extraordinary human being. And I want to make sure, when I say that, that I’m not misunderstood because, by extraordinary human being, I don’t mean superior. I don’t mean better than. I don’t mean to say I’m obsessed with some drive to get to the top and something to prove.

What I am, the idea I am and always have been pretty possessed by though is that we are here and that matters, and the sense that there is so much about ourselves that we don’t understand and so much that we can tap into, so much we could learn, so many ways in which we could deepen and evolve and grow. And you also know that I’m obsessed, possessed, with like what is creativity.

Because to me there is this vein, this source of something that we all have access to, but do we tap into it or not, and I know, oftentimes, it seems like it just smacks some people upside the head when they’re born and they come into this word like it, but I do believe creativity is fundamentally a human quality and that exploring your creativity, claiming it, knowing what it is, knowing that you’re creative and what that means on a meta level, meaning that you have so much power in your life, so much more than you are letting yourself be onto, and that we limit ourselves unnecessarily in these ways.

And I do think that that’s where a lot of suffering in the world comes from, and that it matters that we’re here, these gifts that we have, unfolding them, learning to unlock them as we do pull from us, evoke from us, build our souls in this world by what we’re building in this world, that that is part of what’s going to heal mankind, heal the planet. That’s where I’m coming from.

So, a little back story – because a lot of people are like, why do you get so worked up about things like the 10,000-hour rule? So that’s a little backdrop about why. And then the other reason why is also because I really care about the individuals that I’m working with.

There are these meta themes and topics that I love and am very passionate about, and then holy smokes, let me talk to somebody who feels stuck, who feels like the real them and the gift they have to flow in the world is trapped inside of them, or who has been struggling so much because they just know there’s something there to give and yet they can’t get out of their own way, they can’t find someone to help them, they can’t seem to tap it and make progress.

And that’s the sort of thing that gets me going and makes me feel like I could move mountains for another person and have endless energy for this topic. And I do say that part of my genius is helping other unlock theirs. I do feel like that’s one of the reasons I’m here, kind of like a soul genius whisperer.

Years ago, when I started coaching, that was the name of my first program. And that has been almost a decade, and some things don’t change. I think that’s still what I’m doing, still that kind of whisperer to the gift inside of people that wants to live in the world. And so when I see things like the 10,000 hour rule come along and I can see where there is some redeeming value in that and some use, yes, be deliberate, be focused, if you love your craft, if something is whispering to you, if you just have a sense that you have something to give or to create or something within you that wants to be cultivated, then yes, by all means, that is worth the investment of 10 years, of 10,000 hours, and if not, more.

But what I don’t like to see is when people take things like this idea of the 10,000-hour rule and use it against themselves. And let’s just back up for a moment and be clear that it’s called a rule, but just calling it so does not necessarily make it so, unless, and except, there is the danger that you tell a group of people it’s in a published book, that it’s a rule, and people think he’s talking about scientific research, therefore it must be a rule. But it’s actually not.

And not only do I disagree that there is no magic number or some static universal magical rule, like the 10,000 rule, that governs human creativity and governs and determines one’s ability to achieve greatness. But there are also so many errors in Gladwell’s representation of the science from which he argues that this rule is derived.

Anders Erikson was the man whose research on expert musicians, his research is what Gladwell cites as being the basis for this rule. But Anders himself has said that Gladwell’s book, “A provocative generalization,” of what his research really is. And Erikson goes on to say that the rule is a drastic oversimplification and, in a lot of ways, blatantly an incorrect interpretation of his research.

So the argument that this is a scientific rule, the grounds for that are really a stretch. Those are kind of shaky scientific grounds upon which he treads. And I’ll also say, even if that were not the case, let’s say there was some sort of peer reviewed extensive longitudinal very well-designed research out there that did give solid scientific ground of this rule. And I would still challenge that. Because what has happened in times before, there has been plenty of times where there was scientific research that said something had to be done a certain way, was impossible to be done another way, until, what happened? It became possible.

Case in point, Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile. There were actual scientific research studies and papers written on how it was physically – in terms of not only our physical body, but by the laws of physics, physicists and others argues, humans could not run a sub-four-minute mile. And lo and behold, Roger did so, and a few weeks later, having broken that rule that was in the collective consciousness, so many other people broke the four-minute mile as well.

But there are already a lot of people who have poked the holes in the 10,000-hour rule and the logic behind that and how it was a misrepresentation and a misunderstanding of the science. But a lot of that has been talked about and is done, so if you’re really interested, you can find all of those things and read more about it just Googling it.

And then, what happened after all of the hubbub about the 10,000-hour rule was that people started talking about a derivative of that, a variation. I’m not even sure you could call it a derivative, but they’re building off 10,000, the idea of 10,000 something.

There’s an article on the website medium.com and the title is, “Forget the 10,000-hour rule, Edison, Bezos, and Zuckerberg follow the 10,000-experiment rule.” So that’s a great article if you want to learn more about the 10,000-experiment rule. And it does fall very much in line with our conversation these last few weeks about the process of horizontal revision, of doing many iterations and the value in not only that failure is something to be endured, but this idea that deliberate experimentation is actually the process for innovation.

The tag line of this article is, “Deliberate experimentation is more important than deliberate practice in a rapidly changing world.” And it’s a great article and there’s a quote in there from Jeff Bezos where he says, “Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day.” And Mark Zuckerberg is quoted as saying, “One of the things I’m most proud of that is really key to our success is this testing framework. At any given point in time, there isn’t just one version of Facebook running. There are probably 10,000.” The article goes on to say, “Bezos and Zuckerberg aren’t saying that experimentation is one of many strategies. They are saying it is the strategy.”

And I do like that version better. I think it’s an improvement upon the 10,000-hour rule and I think there is still so much to be added to the discussion. And when I thought about, why am I thinking so much about these things, it’s what I feel is missing. And part of that is just looking at the overall paradigm that gives rise to things like the 10,000-hour rule and the 10,000-experiment rule.

And I believe what gives rise to that is almost inherent drive in our society, in our collective consciousness, towards mastery and the way that we define it, the way we understand it, but also why we value it and why mastery and expertise are deemed so important to us. Which brings me back around to the connection to the people that I work with.

So many people I work with are still using mastery, whether it be trying to achieve mastery via rules, like the 10,000-hour rule, approaches like that, or approaches like the 10,000-experiment rule. Too many of my clients and people that I talk with in discovery calls are using this sort of paradigm of mastery against themselves because they feel so far behind the eight ball that then they don’t ever start and they’re not seeing the value that’s to be gained from going from not zero to 10,000, but zero to one. That’s often the biggest hurdle. And then zero to 20, zero to 100.

And not only going through those hours and going through experiments and iterations, but this idea of getting to the end goal of mastery is also eclipsing how important your quality of attention is and how important your way of being is along the way. There’s so much stress and pressure to get to this mastery, your expert stage, that some people just give up, and those that are tenacious enough to not give up, oftentimes, just make themselves miserable along the way, and I think, limit their creative potential and limit the art that flows from them, the results that flow from them because they’re also limiting their enjoyment of the process along the way and they’re also limiting their ability to use this as a way to cultivate a really extraordinary mindset and emotional mastery.

And a robust – and I want to say pragmatic – spirituality, because I think that’s redundant to me, if it’s pragmatic, it’s spiritual, and if it’s spiritual, it’s pragmatic and that serves creativity really well, and also just the physical stamina, the mental emotional health it takes to be creative over the long haul and really deepen creativity. I have had clients who – well, one client, for instance, is well regarded, to say the least, as a master painter.

If you asked people in the world if she’s a master painter, they’d be like, by all means, if anyone qualifies, she for sure qualifies and yes, hands down. Her work is breathtaking. It’s exquisite. And I have also heard her lament this 10-year interruption she had in pursuing her painting and honing her craft. She was working as a creative professional but not as a painter. And those 10 years that she feels were lost cause her so much pain because that time that she sees to get to a level of mastery that the masters in her field consider mastery, she feels like her time on earth just is not long enough to develop whatever is necessary to make that happen.

And that really has stayed with me and really struck me because I got to thinking, well, why is that mastery so important? For sure because you can feel the sublime in that kind of work, but is that the only time we feel sublime, either as the artist, as the creators channeling the work, doing the work, being involved and engaged in our craft, in our business. Is that the only time that we feel the sublime is when someone has that kind of technical mastery when we are the ones on the receiving end observing the art work, listening to the music, appreciating a very brilliant genius businessperson? I don’t think so.

And so what I offered to this particular client and what I want to offer to you if you are in a similar situation is that if you don’t have those additional years to get another 10,000 hours under your belt, that just means you were meant to flow your magic in a different way. And so to open yourself up to those different ways that you can flow magic, 10,000 hours, that kind of refinement from craft is wonderful. I am not here to say we should abandon deliberate practice and discipline. I value those things.

What I am saying is we should not limit ourselves to this idea that mastery is just this technical deliberate practice approach. I think a true definition of mastery is that you open yourself to all the ways that you can flow magic. Yes, you are in love with the process and you’re awake and you keep going and you learn as you go, and then also be open to the ways, the many infinite ways in which the magic can flow through. And if you are so aching to flow the magic, stay with it because I think it wants you as much as you want it.

I’ve recently been reading and loving this book called Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words. It’s essentially a transcript of a decades long ongoing conversation, an interview done by a woman named Malka Marom, a conversation between her and Joni Mitchell and some of the other musicians and creatives that Joni worked with.

And there’s so many great takeaways about the creative process, and I think, a very expanded paradigm of what creative mastery is. This book is a beautiful example and illustration of the ways that we need to blow up this narrow, and I think, patriarchal definition of mastery that is a very rigid approach and very technical and very rational, cerebral, logical and also, one of my other arguments for why it’s patriarchal is because it’s this paradigm of, like, if you get to this place of mastery, you pay your dues, you put in your time, and you are deemed by other people as worthy of that title of master, then the patriarchy will hand you the entitlement slip that then allows you to flow your magic.

And what I want to say is you don’t need to wait for any title like mastery or anyone else’s opinions to flow your magic. You might be painting for the first time ever and you might be flowing magic before you even know what’s happening, but you just need to keep going to let it have a stronger clear voice. But I think these ideas of paying dues and waiting to be accredited by other people – and by that I mean to be legitimized and receive your credibility from other people or outside opinions, that that inhibits our ability to tap our own true greatness and to see what we really can do.

I see people all the time hold themselves back artificially because no one has given them permission yet to be great. No one has given them the title. No one has given them the award. A very well-read friend of mine who actually has Pulitzer Prize-winning friends, has said that, you know, the Pulitzer is usually, in poetry anyway, for the book they wrote before that should have received Pulitzer, but was passed over, so it’s kind of a catch-up prize.

Whether that’s true or not, what I do want to go back to emphasizing is don’t buy into some mythology about what it takes to flow your magic. Believe that if something wants to happen through you, that magic is already happening. And keep showing up. Keep showing up to do your part and do it in all the ways you can.

So, the reason I bought up the Joni Mitchell book is because she didn’t have this pedigreed musical background or training. She actually often describes herself as a frustrated painter. And the music really didn’t start for her until she needed some spending money and she got a ukulele and, within six months, she was getting little gigs here and there singing and playing her ukulele at coffee bars. And then she never stopped.

She just kept going and she kept going. But within six months, she was playing small gigs, motivated not by mastery, but she just loved this process of singing and playing, but also motivated because she was a poor college student and needed spending money.

And then also, this is another place, the story of her life and her artistry is also another place where I think sort of the patriarchal paradigm of mastery breaks down. And that is, if the argument is you become an expert, let’s say at 5000 hours, and 10,000 hours is what deems you, allows you to access whatever that is within that facilitates mastery, allows you to be a master, then wouldn’t that hold true then that if you just kept that up every decade, what would you be, a grand master? A triple grand master in three decades?

But if you look at artists who have had careers over the long haul, it is not this mechanistic robotic formulaic approach. There are lots of ups and downs and life shows us over and over again that neither it nor creativity is a straight line. But in that long, long career and over that huge body of work that she has had, she’s been a nobody, she’s been the somebody. She’s been back to being old news and a nobody, and then just recently, they had her 75^th year tribute again.

But all that time, she has brought so much magic by just following this thing that had possessed her and letting it flow over and over. And she remarks at different times in these interviews that it was interesting to her that she could feel her creativity deepening with time. And there was a really fascinating story where she talks about being in Amsterdam for a show that she was playing, and while she was there, there was a Van Gough exhibit and it was a chronological exhibit of his life’s work.

And she said she had never seen so much of his early work, but here they had it in chronological order and she was stunned to see, in so much of his early work, that he did not appear to be gifted. And as a painter looking at a painter’s work. She described it as it was just clear that he was struggling in many of these early works.

And then what she said next I found so striking. She said, “And then you can see it come in. He struggled and he struggled, and then you can see it come in.” And what was the it that she was talking about that comes in? And what is it that allows us to struggle and struggle for a while when it hasn’t come in on the exterior yet?

I also want to point out that when I read that and she describes the struggle, I don’t see that as a part where the gift isn’t present. I see that as proof that the gift is there. Why would someone struggle? Accept that you just know you have to do this and that the struggle is actually part of what builds the gift, what allows you to birth the gift, what allows you as you’re trying to build this thing out in the world, it’s what allows you to build that thing within you and it’s this back and forth. It gets stronger and it gets stronger until the point where there is something that others can see or sense.

But you have to honor what you see and sense long before anyone else does. So many times in the struggling parts of my journey, whether that was as an entrepreneur, as an artist, I would do what I always do when I’m really yearning for answers. I’d go within and I’d ask something higher within me, a wisdom within me that knows so much more than I do but that holds everything that I am so deeply longing to know, and I’d want this great wisdom that would help me with the struggle, that would help me find a stronger faith again.

And so often, what it would say is, just keep going. And so I have those Post-It notes all over the place. And sometimes, it is that simple advice that is really the most profound and that’s why I love stories like the story of Joni Mitchell’s life, the story that she shared about Van Gough, also the story of so many of my clients who are going back to trusting that which wants to happen through you and know, oftentimes, that just keep going is the most profound advice you could receive.

That, and I also want to add, if you know you’re just going to keep going, you can persist in doubt and second guessing and self-loathing and feeling like you’re not going to be good enough until you get that mastery status and then somehow you’ll feel better about yourself and the world will feel better about you, you can proceed according to that mythology of mastery, or you can persist in faith and love and kindness and in cultivating within you a joy along the way, gratitude along the way, a sense of very warm positive self-regard and love and appreciation along the way.

And for sure, remember that if the rules – and by rules I mean if the going mythology in your industry, in your area is such that, oh no, you can’t be a master until this or that or this or that, then I would blow that up and I would open yourself up to all the ways that you can flow magic. Because to me, I don’t want mastery if it doesn’t involve flowing magic. And to me, that’s where we need to blow up the definition of mastery. And I don’t mean blow it up as in to destroy it, but expand it so it includes all of these ways where the seemingly impossible can happen.

There’s one artist we all know who I feel is an extraordinary outstanding example of an expanded paradigm of mastery, and that is Marilyn Munroe. There is this story about Marilyn Munroe where someone was talking to a director who worked with her often and always called her back to work on new projects. And Marilyn was notoriously bad at forgetting her lines, showing up late, staying in her trailer too long. And so someone had asked this director, who do you put up with that? There are so many other people who would be technically better, would show up on time.

And the director said, “Listen, my aunt could memorize the lines and know them word for word. My aunt would show up on time.  But Marilyn brings the magic.” And I’m assuming this director doesn’t have a world class actress for an aunt, so I don’t know why he didn’t choose to reference some other technically amazing actress of the day. But I think he didn’t because still, Marilyn brings the magic.

And would she fit someone’ definition of a theatrical master? I don’t know. But if she doesn’t fit that definition, do you think it matters? Because undoubtedly, she was a master at flowing the magic, and that’s a story I like to share with my clients too who are very hard on themselves for what they perceive to be their weaknesses, and instead of leaning into their strengths.

And a male example of this, of I think this very expanded definition of mastery, is Chris Matthews from Coldplay. Years ago, I saw this 60 Minutes interview where Chris Matthews was being interviewed and the journalist interviewing him asked, how does one get to be a rockstar, a world famous, like, one of the rockstars among rockstars? And his answer will stay with me forever, obviously, because it’s been so many years since I saw that interview.

And he said, “Listen, I know I am never going to be the best musician in the world, the best piano player, the best guitar player. It’s not going to be me. I know I’m not the best vocalist in the world. I know I’m not the best dancer in the world.” And he’s like, “But what I am is I am the most enthusiastic. When I get on that stage, I know I have the most enthusiasm.”

And I especially love that, knowing that the word enthusiasm, the word of that, entheos means, like, in the spirit of god, like flowing the god spirit. So that, to me, again shows you don’t have to master something in the technical way to be the best in the world at the guitar, at the piano, at vocals, at songwriting, at dancing, to be a rockstar.

What he did tap into was flowing the magic. Did he have to graduate from Julliard or be deemed the best musician in the world, the most enthusiastic in the world, in order to flow the most enthusiasm, in order to be such a phenomenal rockstar? Nope, no one told him he could be the most enthusiastic, did he put in 10,000 hours?  I doubt that. 10,000 hours of practicing being the most enthusiastic, I doubt that.

He was tapping in and flowing the magic. Did that make him a rockstar over night? No, but I do think that tapping into that kind of energy that energy of enthusiasm is the fuel that will help you move through that process that can be very difficult, that process of deliberate practice, that process of putting yourself out there as you are struggling to birth this gift in the world.

Ideas about mastery, ideas like the 10,000-hour rule, understandably become popular. And I for sure was drawn to it the way I’m drawn to learn anything that’s within the realm of unleashing your creativity and evolving human potential and creativity. But I lose my appetite for it and I lose my patience when I see that what it’s doing is becoming a mythology that actually limits us.

What I would like to see instead is that we take a step back and examine why we’re obsessed with mastery. How are we defining it, why the way we’re defining it matters and ask ourselves, what is it that we are after in our quest for mastery and is there a more powerful way to get there?

And I want to be clear that I am not here to villainize mastery or to suggest that anybody should abandon a disciplined pursuit of deliberate practice, because I for sure believe that there is tremendous immense value in the process of having a discipline, of having a devoted approach to your craft and to doing the work, to cultivating your skills and your personhood, your humanity, in the process.

I am the last person that wants to deprive you of the journey and the gifts that high quality of attention to your craft provides you, because that’s what you and the world deserves.  And that holds true whether you are an architect, a leader of a corporation, a parent, a musician, an athlete, a painter.  What I really wanted to contribute to the conversation about mastery today is how important it is that we be aware of the myths that we’ve made into rules for living and rules for how we work as human beings, rather than acceding our own deepest wisdom and being open to so many ways that things can happen and evolve.

And I for sure believe that success leaves clues and it’s definitely worthwhile to study the approach of people who have done something and done it well and have mastered a meta process of learning, but never abdicate returning to your own internal GPS and barometer. Going back to the Joni Mitchell example, she was not classically – she’s mostly a self-taught musician.

She doesn’t read music. She can’t write music, and yet the musicians who work with her say the things that she comes up with are so out of this world that it’s complicated for them, some of the world class musicians, complicated for them to be able to figure out what she’s doing musically and how to transcribe that so that a whole band can play with her and so that the music can be written down. She didn’t study that from anyone.

And she has this amazing line in that book where she said, “Unlike some people of my day who learned guitar by they watched certain guitar players and played in the mirror, I never studied other musicians. I’ve always felt that music comes not from musicians but comes from the muse.” And I think that’s why some of her work was so innovative and so fresh and, like, such a breakthrough, was so creative and original, was because was she, was she not pursuing mastery?

I don’t know if that’s even relevant. But she was definitely tapped into something and flowed something really extraordinary that just continued to deepen over time.

And so this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in, take this information, don’t just listen to it, be entertained by it, but lean in, take this information, work with me, really coach with me and make it transformational.

We do need to be aware of these myths that we’ve made into rules that are ruling our lives and I think way too often inhibiting our potential, inhibiting the deepening of our creativity. What we need is a new empowered mythology, a new empowered way of thinking about creativity that’s kind of a revolutionary approach, evolutionary and revolutionary approach to our understanding of what it is to be creative, so how you can do that today in a very specific pragmatic way, but it’s also going to require that you look at the philosophies that govern your life and challenge them.

I want you to think of something that you dearly want to create or experience. Maybe it’s a certain kind of creation. Maybe it’s a certain level of performance or success, income, a certain lifestyle. And now, I want you to think about what is your version of the 10,000 hours that stands between you and experiencing, creating, flowing the kind of magic that’s the whole reason you want that thing?

Do you have any rules, like the 10,000 hour rule mythology, like the ideas, the rules we have about mastery, that are artificially keeping you from experiencing what you want to experience, artificially keeping you from being who you know you are built to be and falling in love with this process of ever deepening your ability to connect to and flow your very special and particular kind of magic.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you’ve found this and other episodes meaningful, useful, enjoyable, I would love it – and it’s the best way to support this labor of love – if you would go to iTunes and leave a review. And today, in particular, I want to thank you so much for the downloading, the sharing, the subscribing, the reviews you have already left, because just today, I saw the great news that this podcast actually broke into the top 100 in my category in the US.

I was so thrilled, I made this little post about it on Facebook and I was just writing about what I just told you, and then also about how that is awesome. I’m super stoked about that. And I want it to continue climbing and, as I’ve mentioned before, the metric that matters most to me is, is this really truly useful and meaningful to another person?

So one listener commented on that post, Carrie wrote, “Heck yeah it is meaningful and useful.  I usually start my day off while getting ready, putting makeup on, listening to your podcast.” Things like that just make me so happy that my heart is so full, it comes out through my eyes. Thank you, Carrie. I, again, love just knowing that this is a part of people’s lives.

And if you want to bring this work into your life in an ever deepening and enriching personal way, the best way to do that right now is to go to my website, www.leahcb.com and sign up to be on my mailing list because I have a lot of exciting things going on right now, and then also coming done the pipe in 2020, I’m going to be talking about that more in next week’s episode, so I’ll just put a little bug in your ear now.

But the best way to stay in the know and be the first to know is to go to my website and be on my newsletter list. I am all filled up for private clients for the remainder of 2019. I have a waitlist started and I’m still doing discovery calls for people who are interested in both private coaching and or group coaching programs, retreats, coming up in 2020, so you can still sign up for those.

And if you are interested at all in working with me in 2020, it’s best to hop on that waitlist now. As I mentioned last week, I have really been doing some deep reflecting and dreaming, planning for not only next year, but 10 years down the road. And one thing I know for sure is that I want this work to not just be limited to me and to people that can work with me directly. And I don’t want it to be limited to just the people that can work with me through The Art School because what’s going on there, I feel like, I something that I want to be able to spread to more and more people.

So as incredible and beautiful and as much as I love community, I want it to move even beyond community and be more of a movement. I received a really beautiful letter from an Art Schooler this week and a beautiful gift. I posted a picture on Instagram if you want to see this beautiful mug that this person sent me. And she wrote, “Leah, you bring so much light, joy, truth, money-moxy and art power to The Art School.”

And what I loved about that is she talked about me bringing those things, but to The Art School. And I feel like really – and The Art School has taken on a life of its own, and a high as my expectations always are for this, people still blow me away. These last two weeks, we’ve been working on money and power and it’s been that sacred work to me, that sacred ground. And people are blowing it out of the water, doing some heavy inner lifting, but also moving the needle out in the world as well.

People have asked for raises and received them. They’ve been making offers, making sales, writing books, finishing books, painting. I have a couple even right now on a retreat together painting in Hawaii, making music, making albums, writing poetry, painting, one woman, for the first time in years, healing relationships, and then also falling in love again with the idea of community.

And sometimes people are astounded. They didn’t know community could be like this. And again, as beautiful and powerful as community is, I want it to even grow beyond our community and, again, be more of a movement. So stay tuned to all the ways, all the plans I have for that. And again, the best way is to stay connected by going to my website and joining my mailing list.

So the closing inspiration I have for you today is a very simple and a very humble one, but behind it is so much sincerity because I feel like the energy in which it was given to me was filled with so much sincerity and love. And it’s those three simple words that have helped me so much time and time again, and that is, wherever you find yourself, if you’re not there yet, it’s okay, just keep going.

Just keep going and I can’t wait to see how the gift comes in for you. Have a beautiful week, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you next time.